Rating: 
Summary: The most important single Book in American History
Review:
Uncle Tom is probably the most important single book written in the United States of America. No one is really familiar with American culture, literature, relgion, and history if she or he has not read Uncle Tom.
To understand this book, I would urge people to consult Eric J. Sundquist's book New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin (The American Novel) and Jane Tompkin's Sensational Designs. The 19th Century world and reader that Stowe aimed at read and understood things so differently, that you will miss much without knowing how to look at this book the way Stowe wrote to them and the way they read.
This book has a broad purpose: literary to decide what is wrong with the entire world and present an answer. If you follow the sweep of the book you will find Stowe takes on everything from whether the issues of the 1848 revolutions can be resolved on the side of Democracy, to the question of marital relations amogn the free and the white. The issue of slavery is not the book's only focus. It is, in fact, the solution.
Stowe's real thesis here is that American Chattel slavery is the number one evil in the world, that this evil corrupts every institution in society North and South and corrupts far beyond the borders of the United States, and that no compromise with it or avoidance of it is possible.
To Stowe, slavery is an abomination not just because of the cruelty, savagery, exploitation, and degradation involved, but above all, it is an abomination against God, the most unChrist-like behavior possible.
Thus the relgious solution she offers is to become more Christlike in your opposition to slavery and to finally undergrow the Christic experience of dying for your sins and being reborn in Jesus Christ. That's right, in Stowe's time evangelical Christianity, rather than being a fob for right-wing politics, was practiced by some of the militant and serious opponents of slavery.
Stowe creates figures that are Christlike who like Christ die rather than yield to sin and influence the others in their faith. The supreme figure is of course Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom, as a a pejorative, comes not from this novel, but from the Tom shows that blossomed in the late 19th century which were a presentation of a mock version of this story with racist minstrel like charicatures of the African American characters.
In this book, Uncle Tom is a physically majestic, heroic, dignified person, whose faith and dignity are never corrupted, whose death is shown as a parallel to that of Christ in the resurrection of the souls of all around him required to eliminate Slavery. If he is passive, never disobeys his masters, and seems to have not much of a material interest of his own in life, it is because to Stowe this a reflection of his Christic nature.
No doubt at best Stowe sees him as a "noble savage" at Best. There is no doubt if one reads this book and even more clearly STowe's Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin which provided documentation for this book's depiction of slavery, that it is clear that Stowe did not believe African Americans were equal to whites. Her then-current immigrationist views are expressed in the way the one intelligent independently acting Black couple presented here leave the US for Canada once they escape slavery.
Yet, this book accomplished the purpose it had. It galvanized millions of Americans and more millions around the world to dramatically oppose slavery. Uncle Tom was one of the first true international best sellers. In a smaller country, where literacy was lower, and when many people bought books through private libraries where families shared books and the book was often read to family gatherings rather than by one person, Uncle Tom sold two hundred thousand copies in its first year and sold a million copies between its publication and the civil war.
Stowe was honest in her afterward and in other writings to say that her description of slavery in Uncle Tom is much prettier and more nicer than slavery was. She believed an accurate depiction of slavery--Stowe had lived in Cincinatti on the board with slaving Kentucky and traveled through the South--would be so revolting that her target audience of Northern whites would not read this book.
Her book launched a torrent of responses from white southerners as could be expected. However, the popularity of her book encouraged white authors, but especially Black authors to write antislavery books that responded to Stowe. Some of the foundations of Black American literature by authors like Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Harriet Jacobs, and Martin Delany are essentially response to Uncle Tom.
Perhaps the most dramatic is Delany's Blake or the Huts of America whose character is a double to Uncle Tom. However, Delany's hero does not submit to being sold "down the river." He instead runs away and travels throughout the US following the same course as the travels in Uncle Tom showing how slave conditions are so much worse than Stowe showed. Finished with that business, Blake leaves the United States for Cuba where he becomes part of a group of Afro-Cubans unwilling to suffer like Christ and Uncle Tom. Like the current leaders of Cuba, they start to organize an international revolution of Slaves and the oppressed!
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: A truly inspiring story, told with humour, with keen insight, and passionate indignation at the plight of slaves in the United States. Earnestly demonstrating the evils of slavery, Stowe introduces us to a plethora of characters, all powerfully and humanly realized. Uncle Tom, Eliza, Topsey, Miss Ophelia, George, Simon Legree all come alive for us, and their triumphs and sufferings are all the more poignant for it. Stowe approaches the subject realistically. She never once makes clumsy generalizations - every situation between slave and master, and between environment and slave is evaluated according to its individual circumstances. One uniform idea emerges, however, and that is the slavery is morally wrong, and is therefore destructive, not only to the dignity, the integrity, and the very soul of the slaves themselves, but also to those who own them. The argument Stowe makes for this idea is as intelligent as it is powerful.
The book has its flaws. The plot clearly indicates its origins as a serial, and Stowe does tend to belabour her point needlessly in some passages. Still, these flaws do little to hinder the flow of this powerful narrative. (5/5)
Rating: 
Summary: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Review: Beautiful book that describes the horrors of slavery and what a mother risked to save her son and what a Christian man did to help his master. Above all, how they managed to keep their faith above and through all the opression of slavery.
Rating:
Summary: Not perfect, but way ahead of its time!
Review: I usually don't expect 150-year-old novels of ideas (and this is the quintessential novel of ideas) to be page turners, but Stowe is to be commended for writing what is first of all a great story. Never mind all the political sermonizing she does here -- and there's plenty of it -- this is above all a gripping story. Every time I expected a chapter to head into tedious territory, I was pleasantly surprised. Even though everyone knows what will happen to Uncle Tom -- this being a slave narrative written before the Civil War, after all, -- I couldn't help but continue wanting to read on. This was the second best selling book of the 19th century not only because it was highly controversial, but also because it's a well-told story, and I say "told" because Stowe herself often claimed that God dictated it to her. And it seems to be more spoken than written, especially with her frequent direct addresses to the reader.While there may be something to Stowe's claim of divine inspiration given its impact, the book is certainly not without its faults. The character of Eva, for instance, is unlike that of any normal living child. She's a saintly caricature. And her neverending conclusion drips with maudlin sentiment exaggerated to Biblical proportions. Similarly, Uncle Tom doesn't bear resemblance to anyone I've ever met. But most troublesome is Stowe's romanticism of the black characters. She lumps them together and stereotypes them in one way or another. Clearly she means no harm; just the opposite is her desired effect. But it sometimes comes at the price of preachy condescension. They may be positive sterotypes, but they are stereotypes nonetheless, and they weaken her story. Having read and enjoyed the highly-acclaimed and abundantly-awarded "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones, it dawned on me that Stowe really had a more thorough understanding of even the most subtle effects that the institution of slavery had on blacks and whites both northern and southern alike even with ideal slave masters. She even appears to foresee the differences of opinion that would later crystallize in Martin Luther King's brand of civil disobediance and the more militant versions advocated by the Nation of Islam and Black Panthers, juxtaposed in the diverging paths of the quiet, pious and tolerant Tom with that of the more directly oppositional George. She criticizes neither, though she seems to favor Tom's path, knowing full well that Uncle Tom is unique, and his abundance of Christian tolerance isn't likely to be found in the general population -- nor is it a path she desires for most slaves. She would rather that slaves simply escaped. She also seems to advocate their creation of a country of their own, taking Liberia as a model. Still, further, Stowe is an early feminist, and as a result, the characters that are most interesting here are the women. Ophelia comes nearest of all the characters in the book to walking off the page. And Cassie, a finely complex creation, though introduced only in the last 120 pages or so, nearly steals the climax. And what of the villains? They, too, are caricatures to be sure. To me at least, Simon Legree left something to be desired. He occasionally comes off as more of a buffoon rather than the Satan you know him to be deep down. But Marie St. Claire -- again, the woman -- is as clear a picture of selfcenteredness as Scrooge is of miserliness. Hemingway said that all modern American literature dates back to Huckleberry Finn, but I think he needed to look about 30 years earlier than Twain to Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a masterpiece of American fiction; if it is not the Great American Novel, it is, at least in terms of sales, impact and literary merit, the Great American Novel of Ideas.
Rating:
Summary: A Book With A Purpose
Review: The book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was written for a purpose; it was not meant to be merely entertaining for its readers. Stowe wrote it in order to show its readers how awful and degrading slavery is to people and mankind. Harriet Beecher Stowe hated the "peculiar institution," and she wanted others to see why she hated it. It is an entertaining and exciting book that causes readers to feel as if they are a part of the story. The way it is written allows readers almost be able to relate to the slaves and feel the torture and pain that they felt in the story. The slave owners were portrayed as heartless devilish men, and the slaves were portrayed as their victims. Readers are able to feel emotions towards many of the characters. For instance, readers end up hating Simon Legree, the cruel slave owner. They feel pity and sadness when he treats Tom, the good, unfortunate slave, cruelly. Another example is of the feeling of love and pity that readers tend to feel towards the saintlike child, Eva. Though Stowe's writing came across as preachy at times, I found the book to be very well written with a clever plot. It is educational to its readers by helping them to see the way life was for different people in the time period in which the book took place. The book was a bestseller when it was first released to the public. It caused much conflict and uproar over the subject of slavery. In many cases Stowe's reason for writing the book served its purpose. Many people became supporters of abolition because of this book. It was interesting for me to read it knowing that it was one of the causes of our country's Civil War. I could understand why it caused so much controversy between the North and the South when I read it. Uncle Tom's Cabin is definately interesting and worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Should be required reading in all United States highschools
Review: The legend goes that when Abraham Lincoln met Harriett Beecher Stowe, he said to her, "So you're the little lady who started this great big war." The impact of this book cannot be overstated. By showing the kind and compassionate slaveholding families, as well as the horrors inflicted upon Uncle Tom by Simon Legree, Stowe illustrates that the institution, by its very nature, can never be kind or compassionate despite the actions of the individual slaveholders.
The book begins as Uncle Tom is sold to a slave trader. Though Mr. Shelby, his master, hates to sell him because he has been loyal and Christian, he recognizes that he has no choice based on large debts he has accumulated. Simultaneously, Mr. Shelby decides to sell a three-year-old boy, Harry. Learning this, Harry's mother, Eliza, escapes with this boy and heads north for Canada. Stowe continues to outline the diverging fates of Eliza and Tom throughout the novel.
Tom is sold to a kind family with a nearly divine daughter, named, aptly, Evangeline, who convinces her father to free his slaves. Before this can happen, her father is killed and Tom is sold to the brutal Simon Legree.
Stowe has been criticized for her racism, which does come through in her storytelling. She often refers to the steadfast faith common to people of African decent and makes other sweeping generalities. However, this story cannot be taken out of context and one cannot disregard the era during which it was written. Stowe was heroic to depict the gamut of possible treatments of slaves, and portray slavery as nearly equally cruel no matter how kind the master. The fact remains that no matter how kind an individual slave holder was, slaves were still subjected to having their families ripped apart when dictated by economic need or by death of their masters. By not depicting all masters as ogres, Stowe's abolitionist message rings more truthfully and convincingly. Lest we ever forget just what it meant to own another person, in all its various vestiges, every high school student in America should be required to read this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond the term "classic"
Review: This book is beyond the term "classic." I tend to think of classic books as those you're made to read in school. We didn't have to read this one--I came upon it by myself. The book is a tale of adversity in the struggle for freedom, a look into human cruelty as well as human compassion, and one man's loyalty to those he is indentured to. The novel is set in a period just before the Civil War; during the time when the black people of America were not citizens, and had no rights. In the south during this time, the blacks were forced to work hard labor on plantations and were required to live in small dorms outside of their owner's homes. However, the novel is more than just a narrative of slaves, but of human emotion rising up in the face of adversity. It is a story of the fight for freedom, and an account of the history of America. The author brings out the humanity in the slaves, and describes the great injustices that took place during the time. The characters of this book are strong, resourceful, and respectable. If you're interested in race and racial relations also try "Raising Fences" and "The Bark of the Dogwood."
Rating:
Summary: Beyond the term "classic"
Review: This book is beyond the term "classic." I tend to think of classic books as those you're made to read in school. We didn't have to read this one--I came upon it by myself. The book is a tale of adversity in the struggle for freedom, a look into human cruelty as well as human compassion, and one man's loyalty to those he is indentured to. The novel is set in a period just before the Civil War; during the time when the black people of America were not citizens, and had no rights. In the south during this time, the blacks were forced to work hard labor on plantations and were required to live in small dorms outside of their owner's homes. However, the novel is more than just a narrative of slaves, but of human emotion rising up in the face of adversity. It is a story of the fight for freedom, and an account of the history of America. The author brings out the humanity in the slaves, and describes the great injustices that took place during the time. The characters of this book are strong, resourceful, and respectable. If you're interested in race and racial relations also try "Raising Fences" and "The Bark of the Dogwood."
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read...
Review: This is definitely a book worth reading. I have refrained from reading it previously for no real reasons, but when it was on sale at the bookstore, I decided that it was time to read it. The story is amazing. When I first heard of the book in history class, I thought that it would be a book about harsh slave masters, and how they are unfeeling and torture all their slaves. However, Stowe was able to use her book's length to her benefit. Even though during the time of it's publication, most Southerners were angry that the book misrepresented them, I feel that the book used a great amount of time showing that not all slave masters were hard drivers. It wasn't until the very end when the readers met with the harsh slave driver. The previous slave owners we'd met would have been considered the lesser of the evils. The book is a great read, sad, tragic, and feeling, while given in a very different way than I've ever read (the author will disrupt the narrative, and plead to the readers to understand the agony, then resume with the narration). All in all, I was quite please, and very moved.
Rating:
Summary: This Book is not at all as it has been portrayed.
Review: This novel is notorious in American culture because of its reputation as a stereotypical novel. This novel is much more than that. Her original character of Uncle Tom is much more complex than what is seen in adaptations and subsequent productions of this book. Ms. Stowe portrays him as a young Southern black involved in non-violent activism, not as the downtrodden frightened black as most people think he was. The book is extremely well-written. Ms. Stowe can really tell a story. Her prose and her characterizations are flawless. The book was written in 1852, but the message that it gives is just as relevant today as it was then. This book should be included in a bibliography of important works that outline the ongoing civil rights movement in the United States. Not only that, it's a really good story.
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